Positives:
1. Passing Game - Matt Schaub ooked great passing the ball. He looks a little slimmer this year, has the cool command he demonstrated of the offense last year, and actually has a few extra targets, plus a healthy Andre Johnson.

2. J.J. Watt - I wanted to avoid giving single players as positives, but he's clearly not affected by his elbow and was the reason the team was shaken out of his slow start. This defense has a lot of young, smart talent, but Watt is a different animal. He's every bit the sort of player we've seen in Haloti Ngata, Justin Smith, and Richard Seymour.

3. Secondary - I know it was against Ryan Tannehill and the receiver-less Dolphins, but the biggest boon this defense could get is Kareem Jackson turning the corner. He's always been competent in tackling, but now he appears to be getting his legs under him as a cover corner. There will be no splitting time here.

Negatives:
1. The Running Game (the offensive line) - There was no room for Tate or Foster. All five of the guys up front took turns blowing blocking assignments. It was pretty ugly.

2. The Run Defense - On paper, we looked fine. Watching the game, we were getting gashed prior to the turnaround in the second quarter that forced the Dolphins away from their ground game. Cody and Bradie James appear to be clear liabilities, and as I've said elsewhere, I wouldn't be shocked to see this team start moving to a "4.5 - 1.5 - 5" with the base set involving Barwin, Watt, Smith, and Mercilus with their hands on the ground, Reed serving as a Von Miller-type rover/linebacker, and Cushing as the lone "regular" linebacker.

3. Special Teams - Ugly. I'm willing to give Holliday a scratch on that game as getting the jitters out of him, but he'd better start showing what we saw in the preseason very soon. We also couldn't cover very well, which is something else that looked good in the preseason and not so good now._________________

1. We won
2. Kubiak getting Andre involved in the offense more and actually gave him a play in the redzone.
3. JJ freaking Watt

1. Run defense especially up the middle
2. Special teams especially when we gave up the punt return TD
3. Derek Newton's blocking and being undisciplined._________________
^S/o to Kiltman for the amazing sig; RIP Jose Fernandez

2) 3 sacks by d-lineman (who says 3-4 DE's are just there to take up blocks for OLBs)

3) Mario Williams being a complete joke against a Jets UDFA RT (ultimately we all know $100 million will be laughable for him, but if he busted out of the gates with a 3 sack day, some talking head ESPN idiot would be spouting off about how we'd regret letting him walk).

- (minus)
1) Special Teams. Marciano is going to start feeling some heat on this if it doesn't turn around as last year wasn't pretty either. Coverage on that punt was as bad as I've ever seen by the Texans.

2) Run D - Daniel Thomas rushed for 107 yards on 18 carries last year, Bush goes for 69 on 14 carries this year. If it's a closer game they would have racked up many more and we're visiting MJD this week.

3) false sense of security. Last year we felt pretty good about ourselves after a closer game against the Phins and the D (Kareem Jackson) got picked apart by Brees the next week. Not too concerned about Gabbert doing that this week, but Peyton looms in week 3 and he's not going to let 4 passes get tipped or be skittish in the pocket, like I still expect Gabbert to be._________________

1. JJ Watt is TOO good. He won the game for us and looks to turn the Big 2 in terms of 3-4 DEs into a Big 3 with him, Justin Smith, and Haloti Ngata.

2. The Schaub to Andre connection looks to be back to form which should help us tremendously as our running game will probably take a step back this year. The only negative part is sometimes Schaub seems to not even look Andre's way. He was rarely targeted in the first one and a half quarters.

3. Owen Daniels looks really good. If he and Andre stay healthy, the receiving core shouldn't be a concern.

Negatives

1. Our run defense between the tackles is HORRIBLE. Wade's preference of a small NT seems to be a good part of the reason. Cushing didn't seem to be himself last game as he missed quite a few tackles IIRC but it's probably due to the fact that he's not 100% yet.

2. Special teams. The coverage on the return was god awful.

3. The running game. It didn't look like the norm even though Miami does deserve a lot of credit as they have a very good front 4.